Several dozen people crowded into a tiny Bushwick apartment basement on a cold February night for a live performance of Ingmar Bergman’s “Persona.”
Ryan Czerwonko, 34, who lives upstairs and runs the space, set the scene with his very own furniture: bookshelves dragged downstairs, an old black futon, and a rickety table topped with his morning coffee mug.
The basement isn’t just home to Czerwonko and his worn and torn furniture. It’s also an independent theater and artistic training center called Adult Film, which Czerwonko heads as artistic director, teacher and occasional performer.
“We sat down, and I was like, this is the most New York thing ever,” said 29-year-old Ellen Hamilton, who was squeezed in the back corner.
Photo by Kenneal Patterson for Gothamist
As the lights dimmed, audience members sat on foldable chairs or crouched on the steps leading up to Czerwonko’s apartment. A few made their way out of the windowless bathroom, where performers would eventually crowd for the final scene, staring into the mirror to say their lines.
The show — an experimental performance of a play about love, sex and the human psyche — followed the unstable Elizabeth, played by Mia Vallet, who forms an intense relationship with her nurse at a psychiatric hospital.
And it’s part of New York City’s vibrant and resurgent indie theater scene, where theater fanatics are finding creative ways to get their art in front of others.
In Downtown Brooklyn, there’s the Loading Dock Theatre, founded by a couple who converted half their loft into a black-box theater. Smaller groups, like Feral Theatre Company, conduct readings in Washington Heights homes. Pocket Ghost Productions puts on “site-specific” shows in a Flatbush kitchen and dining room. In her Bushwick apartment, Ann Liv Young hosts an avant-garde “Marie Antoinette” show during a dinner party. Other theater companies include New Relic Theatre, which has productions on restaurant patios or rooftops, and
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